No, I do not want to make an MMORPG but please tell me how long this would take

hey guys first of all, no i'm not some n00b that wants to make an MMORPG with the best graphics around,etc. NO!

i'm just someguy that has only 2 - 3 years of C++ programming experience
10 - 12 months of SDL experience
know a little bit of Flash Actionscript 2.0
and that's kind of it.

what i wanted to do was a extremely simple 2D game that is a sort of build-your-empire sort of thing.

Here's my plan for it right now:

Buildings available:House,Resource maker,Farm

House:the more of it you have the more people you have and the more people you have the more points ;]
Resource maker:it makes resources you need resources to build things (houses,farms,etc.)
Farm:it makes food the more people you have the more food you need or else the people die

Background:just a solid green background nothing too complicated

Controls: Mouse Left Click = selection in general
Esc = quit game completely

What everything looks like:
House:the house will just be a brown square
Resource maker:just a blue square (yeah that seems important enough)
Farm:a yellow square

Objectives:
just build really.

i know this may sound complicated and it may take a while and i might sound like a total n00b but trust me i'm not!

so basically what i'm asking is:
how long do you think this will take?

Sounds like you have a decent background in programming already under your belt. You may have to learn some stuff along the way but you could probably get started trying to map out how you want to put it together.

I can't really answer how long it will take because a lot of it depends on how you code and how you want things to be put together. The first thing you want to do is scope your project. Break it down into small sections, figure out what would go into those sections and give yourself an estimated time. ie: Data type and storage for map data: 6 hours. Do this for every part of your game. When you are done take the number and add 50% to it. That will give you a good idea of how many hours it will take to do.

It sounds like a fun project even if you don't complete it you should be able to take a lot of new skills away from it.

Just a rough guess I would say it should take you a couple of months part time giving it an hour or two a night, but your numbers may vary greatly.

This should be a good project to really jump in and get the feel for just what is required in making a full game, let me know if you have any other questions. I am sure some other forum members will weigh in with their opinions shortly.